Eustace Chisholm and the Works

by James Purdy

  Of all those who had passed from the waiting-room to the workroom in her studio, it was Daniel Haws she had loved, however briefly, the most. Hated him now of course, loathed and detested him. Wanted his blood. Wanted to see him on the cross, and knew one day without the shadow of any doubt, the situations would be reversed, and he would be skewered and drawn and quartered as she was to be today. Yes, that arrogant coalminer bastard must catch it! “But here I am,” Maureen observed directly to him, “and Amos honey, look how pale you are all of a sudden.” She kissed him.

  She reminisced at length about Eustace Chisholm’s influence on her life. She had met that bird at a Negro dancehall which changed its name every few weeks but was called then innocently The Cotton Patch and offered female impersonators by way of entertainment. Eustace was unmarried still, she recalled, and he was debating whether entirely to go down the drain of the gay life or allow himself to be kept by a lady who had applied for the post. He had immediately recognized Maureen as his near-equal, certainly a confederate, and had toasted her again and again while a “girl” from the chorus sat on his lap. Later in his den on Thirty-third Street, in a colored hotel, she had consulted him at length on her future. He had insisted on testing her charms in order to give her the correct advice, but after they had indulged in the act, he told her frankly he was not impressed by her performance, identified her as a “coital repeater” rather than a partner of love, and for all practical purposes still an untrained virgin. He counselled her if she ever wished to become free of her mother and her Christian Science heritage, and if she seriously desired to enter into her own and find fulfilment as an artist, she must give herself unstintingly to the sexual experience and work at it just as she did her painting, in order to discover its secrets. Mind you, she never tired of informing whoever might be her auditor, she had been initiated into the love act at the ripe age of 23 (she had met Eustace when she was 24). With his help and encouragement, she had at last demolished her mother and Science.

  As she waited out the hour with Amos, she warmed over her old forgotten rage against her mother (whom she called the Fig); that old dame had withheld any knowledge of the human body from her, had refused to toilet-train her (here she gave the gagging details), and at her first discharge of menstrual blood had been more dismayed than her daughter, and had steadfastly sworn she did not know what the bleeding meant or what to do about it (Maureen had had to turn to a neighbor for assistance and comfort).

  Maureen O’Dell’s personal tragedy, according to Eustace, was not all to be laid at the door of her mother: Maureen had been born with the face of a gargoyle on the body of a sylph. Having come to a full realization of her predicament, under Ace’s tutelage, by the age of 25, she had given up any hope of marriage or an average life. She did not exactly follow her mentor’s advice to put a bag over her head and give her body to the first sailor, but she found, once she was “decided,” no difficulty whatsoever in persuading any and all young men to mount her regularly. After her “conversion,” she and her boys enjoyed themselves to the limit of their endurance, and Maureen became a tried and true successful votary of total sexual intercourse. She was often in bed with a different boy each afternoon, which date was like as not followed by a second tryst with a late-comer for an all-night session. She finally could not get enough of it and with her commitment a kind of strange beauty flowered over her face and body. Many of the young men who came into her studio now took pains to kiss her on the mouth and throat for their joy in union was as intense as if she had been a film queen. Prior to her first abortion she felt herself indeed a beauty. Frequent diurnal coitus was also inspiring to her primitive American painting, and she became well-known (at least in Chicago) for her oils. Her face, as primitive as her work, was recognized on the street, and her role as a “serious fucker” became a mere part of her fame. Her mother never found out, or if she did, was incapable of taking it all in, and she glossed over Maureen’s changed way of life, along with her sudden pregnancies and inevitable abortions as completely as she had ignored and refused to comfort her terrified and desperate entry into womanhood.

  Bringing to a conclusion her autobiographical diversion, she quoted with relish Eustace’s final pronouncement on her: “Afraid old Maureen will never please anybody but beginners, but then of course that’s where her big clientele lies, young kids starting manhood. Good for them and good for Maureen. Breaks in our depression boys so they can say they’ve at least had their bang when nice girls and whores were out of reach.”

  She slapped her thigh in uproarious laughter.

  “Damn old Ace for being such a smarty!” she shook her head.

  Maureen took a quick look at the alarm clock, stood up, put on her sheepskin coat, and signalled to Amos it was time to start.

  “All you got to do, sweety pie, is hold my little hand on the way there and whistle to fetch me a taxi when I come reeling out from the operation . . . Ain’t you lucky to be a boy! No matter who makes love to you, you can go off scot free. Even a dose doesn’t keep you off the firing line.”

  She stared at Amos an unconscionable length of time, then under her breath said: “Come to think of it, though, I wonder which of us is worse off . . .”

  Amos’s face turned grave, he paled a bit and remarked: “Because I’m in love with Daniel Haws, you mean?”

  She made a clicking sound with her tongue. “Or maybe because he’s in love with you,” she mumbled.

  Amos started to expostulate, but she went on: “Well, I’m not jealous of you two, honey, any more,” and she kissed him on the mouth. “Let him be in love. Ready now?”

  Pausing again she touched him briefly on the cheek. “One last thing,” and she appeared to make a real effort now to get the words out. “Don’t forget entirely about Reuben Masterson. He’s soft on you good, and unlike Daniel, can give you a hand up if he decides to. Should old Maureen kick the bucket, you go call on Reuben, yourself. He’s ready for you.”

  She made a funny face then with her tongue to counteract the look of trouble which had come over his eyes and mouth, but as he still watched with concern, she grumbled, “Oh, for Christ’s sake, I’m not going to kick off, so don’t act like you was already weighted down with crepe. You can keep a stiff upper today, if I can.”

  As they left the white neighborhood behind, and walked into the colored section (Eustace referred to it in those days as “the district”), they abandoned any pretense at reserve, and shared secrets, recent and far-off, fears, and slender expectations.

  “Are you sure, though, Daniel’s the father?” Amos blurted out, while Maureen was making one of her frequent stops to catch her breath.

  “As sure as your mother is of yours,” she replied with unhesitant conviction.

  Seeing his consternation at this last remark, she quickly amended her statement: “Oh forget the comparison, honey, I forgot about you and your mother. What I mean is, I’m sure-sure about Daniel. Positive-certain.”

  She went on: “Imagine that big stiff Haws falling for you.” She studied Amos carefully. “I can’t be jealous of you somehow because you’re not a woman. It’s a bit beyond me, but since I had to lose him anyhow I’m glad I lost him to you. Imagine him though in love, even if he sleepwalks for it. He only fucked anyhow to show he was a man. And now see what’s come of all his military bearing and army discipline. Head over heels with you . . . Anyhow, I don’t love him any more and that gives me the strength to give up his baby.”

  As they neared the abortion doctor’s office, situated off Forty-seventh Street and Lake Park Avenue, Maureen, never a fast walker, slowed her pace, and Amos slackened his gait to walk beside her until, shuffling and lagging, they resembled stragglers unintentionally bringing up the rear of a cortège.

  Their destination stood before them at last, a dingy slate-colored eight-story structure, entirely vacant except for a half-dozen rooms used for obscure purposes, distributed haphazardly throughout the building. They entered the tiny vestibule.
/>   Maureen looked up the black stairwell.

  “I think I’d remembered everything about this place except the unimportant little matter there’s no elevator, and where we’re going is the top floor, wouldn’t you know?”

  She put her hand over her eyes, and it was Amos’s turn to tell her to buck up.

  They began the long haul up. The steps were uneven and steep, and the only light came from the same kind of feeble 7 1/2-watt bulb which illuminated the halls of Daniel’s rooming house.

  About half way up Maureen whispered to Amos that she hoped the baby would come out by itself by the time they had climbed to the top and save everybody all the rest of the bloody bother. But there’d be no luck for her, she said, she’d been scorched before and knew how it went.

  “Do the likes of us ever have any luck or break?” Amos spoke with an ancient bitterness she had never heard come from him before.

  She observed him for a moment, then shrugging and going up a step ahead of him, said:

  “I’m nearly old enough to be your Mother, so I can tell you you’ll learn by and by those questions aren’t worth the spit to say them with.”

  Her tone too was one of such unaccustomed strong feeling for her that Amos put his arm around her, and kissed her softly.

  They stopped on each landing for Maureen to catch her breath and it was then she cursed Daniel Haws good and hard and thundered for his death.

  When they reached Room 889, Amos put his mouth to Maureen’s ear and whispered, “What’s the Doc going to look like?”

  Maureen lifted her finger briefly to her lips, then her mouth directly against Amos’s face, whispered back, “Black as the ace of spades and twice as baleful.”

  “I pictured him before I asked you.” He closed his eyes.

  She nodded, tightened her mouth, and rapped on the door of frosted plate glass.

  A rasping, shuffling sound was heard directly behind the glass, and a Negro of about thirty-five opened the door on them. His hair had been plastered tight against his skull, and he had on a pale yellow pin-stripe suit and was shod in huaraches. A younger Negro with a zig-zag scar across mouth and chin, wearing a silk stocking over his head, stood near the high window blacked out by thick paint. The room was vacant except for two high rough kitchen shelves pushed together to form the operating table, and a small plank with wheels, on the top of which were instruments.

  “Is this your young husband?” The “doctor” studied Amos.

  “Just a good friend,” Maureen replied, nearly inaudible.

  “Then he got to leave.” The abortionist was decisive.

  “Oh, please no, I’ll need somebody to help me home!”

  “All righty suit yourself.” He grinned and reintroduced himself to Maureen, then, in case she had forgotten his name was Mr. Beaufort Vance, but he kept his eyes for a long time on Amos, like a photographer who wants to keep in mind the favorite pose he wants from his subject. After he introduced them also to his assistant, Mr. Clark B. Peebles, he began his set speech:

  “Now, Miss O’Dell, should you stop living as a result of this very dangerous operation I am about to perform on you, remember I don’t know you, never laid eyes on you. Should you on the other hand recover, which I think you will, considering few of my patients very often die, at least that I ever hear of, then ditto, madame, I don’t know you. Clear? Good.”

  Maureen had kept hold of Amos’s hand while Beaufort Vance spoke, and she released it only to undress.

  The two Negroes waited in bored impatience as she disrobed. She handed the pieces of her apparel to Amos, who finding nothing to put them on, passed them to Clark B. Peebles; he deposited the clothing in a neat pyramid on the floor.

  Beaufort Vance assisted Maureen, mother-naked, up onto the kitchen tables, where once she was stretched out, he gave her face and body a quick inventory, then producing a hypodermic syringe as if out of nowhere, he administered a shot in her thigh.

  Maureen made a second request before undergoing the operation—she wanted to hold Amos’s hand, and Beaufort Vance granted permission with the bitey injunction to go ahead and enjoy hand-holding all she wanted, for she would be fully conscious throughout the entire proceedings.

  Bending over Maureen now, he pulled up her eyelids and looked carefully—it seemed almost angrily—into her pupils.

  “Mr. Peebles, where is my surgery tray?” Beaufort Vance raised his voice for the first time. Mr. Peebles gave a cry of apology and alarm, hurried to rectify his oversight, and soon rolled in the little cart on wheels on top of which some dull-colored instruments lay.

  Amos, in desperation to know where to put his eyes, let them rest for some time on the surgery tray, a performance which evoked in Beaufort Vance a second bitey remark: “Oh, they’re clean enough, never you mind, my very unusual visitor!”

  The abortionist, very tall now, stood at the back of Maureen’s head. Then to the astonishment of Amos, who was the only one who happened to hear it, having folded his arms, Beaufort Vance beseeched Christ the Savior to bless and guide him in the task ahead.

  Opening his eyes from prayer, his face immediately lost its thoughtful look. “Mr. Peebles, where in the flaming hell did you run off to?” he cried. Then locating his assistant drinking from a flask in a far corner, he gave out a deafening second shout which reverberated through the empty room next to them. “Get your black ass over here, and assume your position at once!” he commanded.

  Mr. Peebles quickly ran to the tables, pulled Maureen O’Dell’s legs wide apart to lift them to the level at which Beaufort Vance indicated, by a waspish movement of his head, then moving his body quickly to one side, he placed one arm firmly under her knees until she resembled a fowl trussed for the oven. He then applied a vise-like pressure.

  Swiftly coming to the fore to face his patient, Beaufort Vance, with incredible speed, began the operation at once by plunging an instrument into the helplessly open, direfully expectant Maureen.

  Controlling herself for all of a minute, Maureen then let go with a scream that gave pause to everyone. Beaufort Vance managed to continue exploring with his instrument, but mouthed a command: “Tell her, Mr. Peebles.”

  Mr. Peebles turned to Maureen and said: “Unless you stop that yelling we got to gag you.”

  The operation commenced again, but Maureen’s screams, even more agonized, soon rose again from the kitchen tables.

  Withdrawing the instrument, Beaufort Vance tiptoed quietly to his former position behind Maureen’s head, and like a man in a magician act, from nowhere, he produced a gag with tape, and fastened it securely over her mouth.

  “We don’t want no arm of the law in here now, Miss O’Dell.”

  Then observing Amos standing by Maureen’s side, like a ghost, he seized the boy’s hand and clapped it over the gag.

  “You can be useful as well as ornamental,” the abortionist remarked.

  Whether Maureen continued to scream once the gag had been placed on her mouth, Amos scarcely noticed, for his gaze was directed now at the rivulet of blood, mucous, fluid which had suddenly poured out, streaming thickly over the floor.

  “The amnion,” Amos muttered, horror-stricken, remembering at the same time that the word meant little lamb in Greek. “The amnion!” he raised his voice now as loud as that of Beaufort Vance, but nobody heard him, each intent on work or suffering.

  Whether it was the sight of so much blood flowing as far as his shoes, or the strange insane shock that the amniotic sac had to do with Greek for little lamb, the room shot up before him, and then swam in sickening blackness as he fell heavily to the floor.

  Beaufort Vance, livid with impatience and anger, bent over him, pulled the boy’s tongue out, held a bottle of kitchen ammonia to his nose, then slapped him repeatedly and pushed his head down forcefully. He inspected a rather ugly gash sustained when Amos had fallen. Then seeing the boy had come to, Vance dismissed his cut as nothing, warned him to sit in the corner, and keep his head slightly down, and not to think
he was in a serious way.

  Squatting in the corner, Amos staunched the bleeding from his cut with a torn snotty handkerchief, helplessly moving his eyes first to the slimy stream of gore circulating under the kitchen tables up to his very position, then to Maureen writhing in torture.

  Her cries had become feebler, nearly inaudible, and indeed scarcely human. She vomited persistently through the loosened gag. He had taken so little breakfast he could find nothing inside him to throw up, but retched patiently in sympathetic echo to her paroxysms.

  When she no longer made any sound, he watched with fascinated concentration to see if her breast still rose and fell.

  At last a cry, ear-splitting and monstrous, broke from her. Her gag came off.

  Beaufort Vance’s arm, plunged in gore of varying colors, and slime, was drawing out from her body the slashed, battered and decapitated fetus.

  Amos vomited freely now, groaning and coughing.

  “Bring me that can over there!” Beaufort Vance shouted at Amos. “You, Mr. Faint-Heart, you! March!”

  Amos reeled in the direction Beaufort Vance had pointed to with his bloody hands. Somebody, probably the abortionist, had brought a large garbage can into the room, unobserved by Amos.

  Amos rolled the can to the place the abortionist indicated, and the latter dropped the bleeding mucous of severed embryo inside, not bothering to close the lid.

  Amos found himself again at Maureen’s side. His hand sought out hers firmly, but she did not return his pressure.

  “The difficult part of the operation is now about to begin, Miss O’Dell,” Beaufort Vance was speaking. “So please brace yourself. We are going to scrape your uterus. Ready now?”

  Amos placed his hand gently on Maureen’s hair, wringing wet with sweat, and resembling under his touch the pelt of an animal.